Hide-and-Seek
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
Psalm 139:7-8
I was never fond of the game hide-and-seek. I didn't like the suspense of it. Wondering whether I was hiding well enough and when am I going to get found made me anxious. I wanted to get found first to make the suspense go away. Anticipating who was going to jump out of a hiding place at any moment made me never, ever want to be the seeker.
The countdown and the “Ready or not, here I come!” was stress-inducing and ominous to me. You can probably now tell that I was a very anxious and odd child.
Yet I find myself similarly playing a sort of hiding game with God as a well-seasoned Christian.
Hiding parts of who we are is easy to do amongst people. We can choose to not share what embarasses or pains us, even with those closest to us.
But with God, it’s a very different relationship. There has to be a deep level of denial for us to think we are hiding any part of yourselves from God. Having a selective memory or a guarded history works when we want to present ourselves to others. But God shows up at our hiding places in the hopes of redeeming and healing the very hurts we are trying to hide. He is absolutely for us, not against us.
Knowing this, why do we want to flee his presence?
We may not feel worthy of God or His help. We’re embarrassed. Ashamed. This may make us want to hide. Or it may cause another reaction, which is to pretend. If we act like we are getting this Christian life correct, God will be so impressed. No need to deal with the unpleasantness of our hidden reality.
Whether we are attempting to “ascend to heaven” and believe we are working ourselves into a right relationship with God, or we “make our bed in Sheol” and give up and hide, we are ignoring that we are constantly in the presence of God. Our every thought, feeling, and action is seen and known. And I am a very silly person when I pretend otherwise.
There is no great thing we can do that will impress Him. No grave sin that will make us less precious to Him. He doesn’t want us to be smarter, tougher, or more religious. He wants us holy, and He delights in our feeble attempts at holiness as He does any of our great efforts or sacrifices.
We can pretend we’ve descended so far into our hiding places that we’ve hidden even from God. But the fact is He loves us too much to not continually seek us and cover us with His grace in the midst of our foolishness.
I can attempt to hide from His Spirit, make my bed in Sheol, throw up my facade and hope that no one will find me. Or I can surrender and resign myself to the truth: Hiding is not only unnecessary, but also impossible.
The Seeker found me a long time ago.
Photo by bady abbas on Unsplash